Worlds of Work in Mexico City

Notes from Chapter 2 of John Lear's Workers, Neighbors, and Citizens: The Revolution in Mexico City

Concentration, de-skilling, and division -- three important and inter-related dynamics that marked the development of the working class in Mexico City between roughly 1895 and 1910.

Urban Growth

Railroads played an important role. Gilly discusses the way in which the railroads marked the form in which foreign capital flowed into, and came to dominate, the Mexican economy. Lear expands on this and shows how the rails developed the Mexican working class. He writes,

"Railroads were constituted by and led the way for the flow of massive amounts of foreign investment and technology into manufacturing and urban infrastructure, which included substantial investments in electric power companies, tramways, and factories in Mexican cities. Railroads helped to create national markets for food and to connect Mexico to international markets for its silver, copper, coffee, and other exports...Railroads similarly linked and extended labor markets; for many Mexicans, working to construct, maintain, and conduct the railroad was their first experience with wages and led to their eventual incorporation into a growing and dynamic labor market that moved them back and forth along the railroad lines, from the U.S. border through northern mining enclaves, central textile regions, and coastal oil towns...working on the railroad provided valuable training with machines and industrial discipline...[Many] gained their first involvement with workers' organizations while working on the railroad." [51]

For others the railroad was the vehicle that transported them between their rural past and their new life in the city. According to a 1900 census, 66% of the total Mexico City population was born outside of the Distrito Federal, and a sizable number of the remaining were likely born in the DF and migrated to Mexico City. The character of migration to the City lends itself to a point Bookchin raises in The Third Revolution, that many of the upheavals of the revolutionary era were led by working people of peasant origin or who were removed by only one generation from village society. "Capitalism, in effect, had not fully penetrated into their lives or undermined their sense of independence. It was this kind of 'proletariat,' a class with one foot in the countryside and another in the city, that turned to revolution, if only to recover a sense of social rootedness, coherence, and meaning that was increasingly denied to them in the dismal shops and congested neighborhoods." [Bookchin, 14]

Many migrants came from Guanajuato, Hidalgo, Querétaro, Puebla, Michoacán, and Jalisco. Part of this migration was undoubtedly the rural-urban transition that is a fundamental piece of the primitive accumulation going on, yet it also demonstrates that that transition was not linear nor unidirectional, because the aforementioned states were actually densely populated with large urban areas. Some factors driving this migration from the central valleys of Mexico included "the expansion of large agricultural estates, high population density, and the decadence of traditional areas of mining and artisan manufacture in the face of new areas and forms of production." [53] So displacement from the land in rural areas often threw workers into diverse movements, moving in search of work from one rural area to another, from rural to urban, and from urban to urban. Efforts were continuously made by the emerging capitalist class and the state during the span of Mexico's colonial and early independence years to control this movement and enforce a discipline upon migrating laborers, with varied success.

So taking us back to Mexico City, census data suggests a strong presence of migrants with both urban and rural origins.

Middle Class ("Gente Decente")

At the end of the 19th century, Mexico City had a growing significance as the center of political and economic life for the consolidated nation state. Accordingly, a new elite and middle class emerged here. It entailed civil servants, army officers, teachers, and professionals like lawyers, doctors and engineers. Commerce often led to fortunes extending into finance and industry, especially for foreign-born merchants from Europe (mostly Spanish) and the U.S. Not all made it to the top of the commercial hierarchy, with many small shopkeepers and vendors struggling to maintain and often being pushed out of business by larger, better capitalized foreign-owned operations. Lear points out that the deterioration in the status of small shopkeepers meant that many either exploited their workers even harder, or they made common cause with their workers against the might of the large merchants. Many from the middle class would provide leadership and a base for political opposition against Porfirio Díaz at the time of the Revolution.

By 1910 the upper and middle class constituted about 22% of the city's population.

Urban Proletariat

Textiles and tobacco were the two main industries that underwent factory-scale production involving heavy machinery and large numbers of workers. Mexico City was not the most industrialized city in the country but it was an attractive location for capitalists because it offered the largest consumer market (in a country with a relatively weak market) and inexpensive and relatively experienced labor. The number of Mexico City factory workers rose 355% from 1895 to 1910 (at about 10,000), one-third of whom were women.

Textile workers tended to be country people from rural villages around DF, which had networks that helped feed the factories' labor force. Lear writes that, "As a result, workers in these towns would after 1910 occasionaly try to incorporate campesinos in their organizations or include demands for land in their petitions to government officials."

Important: Factory workers comprised only 4% of the Mexico City work force in 1910 (roughly the same percentage as the combined total of government employees and military men). Lear argues that the emergence of a factory proletariat in the city was important, it was neither numerically nor organizationally the most important sector of the working class.

A more influential dynamic than the introduction of modern factories was the reorganization of the traditional manufacturing crafts and a shifting divide between skilled and unskilled labor. Outside of textiles and tobacco, work tended to be reorganized around expanded, semi-mechanized workshops that relied heavily on the division of mental and manual labor. "Electrical power, new machinery, and new workshop organization incorporating unskilled workers into repetitive tasks resulted in large-scale production and the consequent displacement and deskilling of many traditional artisan groups." A similar process occurred in the U.S. but for Mexico (and for our purposes, Mexico City) this happened later and and in a much shorter period of time.

Small workshops may have been the numerical majority of manufacturing firms at the turn of the century, but close to 75% of all workers in manufacturing were employed in mid-large sized shops. Simultaneously, a few companies organized around large workshops came to dominate many crafts (i.e. shoemaking), such that there was a decrease in the relative importance of manufacturing employment in Mexico City by 1910.

Construction was one trade where the number of workers grew rapidly by 1910. "Skill levels varied from basic bricklayers to highly paid plumbers, but wages and literacy levels suggest that, overall, construction workers were among the least skilled of the traditional trades," and many were day laborers (jornaleros) rather than permanent workers. [69]

By the end of the Porfiriato, craft workers were important in the overall picture of labor in Mexico City, yet few were artisans in the classic sense of the word. "Craftworkers in 1910 were more likely to receive wages than to offer their goods on the market; shops were increasingly separate from their owners' homes; and ownership was increasingly based on capital rather than skill." Craft workers became more and more precarious. Machinery and migration had the effect of reducing the skill and cultural boundaries between trades, which facilitated involvement in working class politics and organizations that emerged during the Revolution.

At the same time, new skilled and semi-skilled occupations emerge such as electricity and electric streetcar workers, and mechanics, conductors and electricians for railroads and tramways. The importance of their work gave these new skilled workers an importance far beyond their numbers, because the could bring the city to a standstill in a strike. And because of the large numbers of workers in these jobs, they facilitated a high degree of consciousness among workers whose send of themselves as workers and their relation to the city extended beyond the workshops.

The basis for nationalism was laid among these sectors because until the revolution, top management and technical positions went mostly to foreign workers, and the industries themselves were often controlled by foreign capital. Lear argues that "much of the organizational initiative in Mexico City after 1910 came from these three groups: textile factory workers, skilled trade workers in rapidly changing industries, and strategic workers in new infrastructure and transport industries...[who together] comprised barely 12% of the labor force." [73]

Unskilled and Casual Labor

The majority of the city's population worked in unskilled manufacturing and service occupations. Most rural migrants were likely to be employed in these sectors. It is in this sector that we begin to see some of the outlines of the gendered division of labor and gender roles. In contrast to social ideals about the domestication of women, women made up 35% of the work force in Mexico City in 1910. The vast majority were restricted to unskilled, short-term work in manufacturing and services that were extensions of household tasks. This raises the contradiction of women's unwaged work in the home -- in part because in this case it shows that women in the home provided the "free" training to workers that the capitalist exploited -- that are explored in detail by Selma James and Silvia Federici, among others.

The clothing industry is telling of the decimation of skilled labor. The factory system had less impact than the division of production and the use of simple machinery which allowed for the reduction of highly skilled labor into separated aspects of production. By 1910, the number of seamstresses and dressmakers combined almost equaled the number of industrial factory workers in the city. Production was divided in other ways to pit women against one another. Commercials shops often employed a core of regular seamstresses on the premises and then during periods of high demand would get other women to cover the excess by working out of their homes. This had the efect of pitting primarily unmarried women (working in the shops) against married women or single mothers (working out of their homes) since the latter was often paid less and used by employers to undermine labor inside the shops.

Domestic workers constituted the largest sector of the working class in Mexico City both because of supply and demand. For middle class and even some working class families, a maid was a necessary sign of respectability. Most domestic workers had few options for work, and they were almost impossible to organize (though complaints by employers about their servants stealing and quitting indicates there was a level of resistance and rebellion among them).

Prostitution was another source of employment for women. Many prostitutes came from the countryside, were often illiterate and indigenous and young, often also working in various service work. Like domestic work, prostitution often represented a transition for women, a "common route of urban assimilation, [for] women who moved into the urban world of free time, expendable cash and freedom from moralistic family structures." [77]

Shifting census categories suggest a floating population of underemployed workers who moved from job to job depending on seasonal and economic cycles. The presence of tens of thousands of underemployed workers acted as a constant downward pull on wages and presented some obstacles to working class organization.

Many were unable to make ends meet, particularly after the recession of 1907, and Lear details some family strategies to deal with the precariousness of working class life. In most working class families, women and children entered the work force regularly. In many cases, extended family grouped together in one household to support the collective. Lear doesn't mention that surely women's unwaged reproductive work in the home was a vital factor to keeping the working class alive and able to report to work for the capitalist each day.

Lastly, on gender roles and women's labor. Lear writes,

"In a world marked by the ideology of separate spheres for men and women, for women to work outside of the private, domestic sphere presented a moral dilemma for many families. Parents, middle-class reformers, labor inspectors, and even the working-class press frequently saw factories and shops as centers of disease and moral corruption for women, particularly where men and women worked together. At the same time, some employers who depended on female labor...insisted that their factories were virtual finishing schools of useful skills and good behavior for young women. Just as important, wives or daughters who worked outside the house were a challenge to male authority over the family...If necessity often drove women into the work force, many...felt a certain pride in the income they brought to their family and enjoyed a freedom from traditional constraints on their activities. The city and its sources of work could fulfill dire family needs but also provide unprecedented opportunities for women, both independence from the demands of male-dominated family life and a new sense of female sociability beyond the traditional spheres of home, tenement, and community." [81-82]

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"Allow Me to Reintroduce Myself..."

So I've gotta get the ball rolling here again, after a long hiatus. I haven't been writing much and seeing an empty blog was getting pretty depressing, so I shut it down for awhile. But with some inspiration and support from close friends and a little bit of harassment from family and relevant faculty, I'm going to give this thesis blog another stab. I saw that Lance over at Exploring American Anarchism has been working on some of the same organizations and struggles in the Mexican Revolution as myself, which is also motivating.

So here goes...

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Trotsky's Theory of Permanent Revolution

Alex Callinicos, Trotskyism
Christopher Z. Hobson and Ronald D. Tabor, Trotskyism and the Dilemma of Socialism

Originally applied in the Russian context, after 1917 this became generalized into a theory of revolution in underdeveloped countries. It rejects the general thesis that the bourgeoisie in the underdeveloped countries was able to play a revolutionary role. It also rejects a “two-stage” approach to revolution: where the first, “national-democratic” revolution expels foreign exploiters, followed by a second, proletarian-socialist revolution that brings to power the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is anti-Popular Front and anti-Menshevik/Stalinist strategy of bloc-ing with the nationalist wing of the bourgeoisie.

Trotsky’s emphasis was that while a particular country may be underdeveloped, it must be considered in the context of global capitalism. So the higher development of capitalism elsewhere mitigates the relative underdevelopment of another place. Russia, for instance, while undergoing intense, rapid industrialization, was able to import straightaway some of the highest technology and organization available at the turn of the 20th century, to the extent that it had some of the most impressive factories in the world by 1905. This combined and uneven development, the “drawing together of the different stages of the journey [toward socialism], a combining of separate steps, an amalgam of archaic and more contemporary forms” (Callinicos) of production, meant that the Russian proletariat, while a minority of the population, yielded a power and significance above and beyond its small size. Thus, according to Trotsky, it, and not the bourgeoisie, played the central role in the struggle against tsarism.

Trotsky believed the peasantry could only act as a national force under the leadership of an urban class. The peasant parties represented the hegemony of the urban bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie over the rural masses. Trotsky was isolated in this position until February 1917 when Lenin and the Bolsheviks adapted his theory of permanent revolution. In October 1917, he was won over to some of Lenin’s prescriptions for the necessity and type of revolutionary organization.

To clarify the differences with Stalin’s (and the Mensheviks’) two stage approach: this was founded on the belief that capitalism was a necessary historical stage that developed the means of production that would eventually provide the material basis for socialism. In countries that were underdeveloped, comparatively speaking, the two-stage approach assumed that the country must first develop along capitalist lines before the relations and means of production would be sufficiently mature. To do this meant to remove the fetters upon capitalism (old feudal relations, landed oligarchies, church, etc.) and establish a strong bourgeoisie in power.

Hence, in the underdeveloped countries, this approach argued, first there would have to be a bourgeois national revolution in which the national bourgeoisie would fight for power, throw out the imperialists, achieve national independence, and overthrow the feudal landowners. This would rely on the “bloc of four classes” where workers, peasants, intellectuals, and the national bourgeoisie would be allies. The task of the revolutionary (vanguard) party was to help the bourgeois nationalist parties take power.

Though Stalin would claim this approach was taken from Lenin, in fact Lenin argued that the national bourgeoisie was weak and cowardly and would ally with the tsar/ancien regime rather than face the power of the workers’ movement. Thus, Lenin said, the workers and peasants would have to carry out the bourgeois revolution against the bourgeoisie (Hobson and Tabor, 39). The tasks of the revolutionary party, in this setting, were to combat the bourgeoisie’s political influence over the workers and peasants.

Trotsky was not entirely in disagreement with other Russian Marxists on the question of revolution, in that he did believe that Russia was too underdeveloped to establish a socialist society. The revolution was to be permanent in two senses, then: it had to proceed without interruption beyond the bourgeois democratic stage; and it could not be limited to Russia alone, but had to occur in other countries (a counter-argument to Stalin’s “socialism in one country”) (Hobson and Tabor, 37).

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History, Civilization, Progress

Murray Bookchin, The Philosophy of Social Ecology: Essays on Dialectical Naturalism, pp. 147-183

Bookchin is “negating the negation”. In dismissing deterministic, patriarchal, and white supremacist notions of history, civilization, and progress, critics have gone too far in the opposite direction and opted for a modern relativism that leaves little possibility for understanding History, let alone constituting a revolutionary praxis.

What is History? The “rational content and continuity of events (with due regard for qualitative ‘leaps’) that are grounded in humanity’s potentialities for freedom, self-consciousness, and cooperation, in the self-formative development of increasingly libertarian forms of consociation.” (157) History is what is rational in human development. Humans have of course committed irrational acts, murderous atrocities, and inflicted all sorts of evil upon one another. Yet Bookchin distinguishes between human capacities and human potentialities. And is there a human “potentiality for evil”? Capacities for evil acts do not mean that human potentiality is constituted to produce evil and destructiveness. “Episodic capacities” are not the same as “unfolding potentialities.”

“If our views of social development are to be structured around the differences that distinguish one culture or period from another, we will ignore underlying tendencies that, with extraordinary universality, have greatly expanded the material and cultural conditions for freedom on various levels of individual and social self-understanding. By grossly emphasizing disjunctions, social isolates, unique configurations, and chance events, we will reduce shared, clearly common social developments to an archipelago of cultures, each essentially unrelated to those that preceded and followed it.” (162-163)

Bookchin argues there is a “legacy of freedom” or a tradition of increasing approximation toward freedom and self-consciousness. Civilization verifies this – it is the potentialities of History embodied and partially actualized. It consists of the material, cultural, and psychological advances that humanity has made. The “dialectic of freedom” has emerged and reemerged in recurring struggles for freedom that have expanded freedom and cooperation. There is also a “legacy of domination” yet this, Bookchin argues, is the realm of the irrational. That which defies rational interpretation remains an event, not History in the dialectical sense of the unfolding of humanity’s potentialities for freedom, etc. Progress is the advance of freedom over domination.

“The denial of a rational universal History, of Civilization, of Progress, and of social continuity renders any historical perspective impossible and hence any revolutionary praxis meaningless except as a matter of personal, indeed, often very personal, taste.” (167)

History is an ever-developing “whole”, but not in a predestined or predetermined sense. Nor are humans the tools of the “God of History” that mythically operates unseen and carries out the final self-realization of History. Humans are active agents who may or may not make real their potentialities. There may or may not be an “end of history”, a finality to the historical process, because “History forms its own ideal of [the notions of the rational, the democratic, the free, and the cooperative] at various times, which in turn have been expanded and enriched.” (168)

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Capitalist Development from Independence to the Porfiriato

Adolfo Gilly, The Mexican Revolution, Notes Part 1

Gilly traces the early foundation of the Revolution of 1910 to the development of capitalism in Mexico following its war for independence in 1810. Led by Miguel Hidalgo and José María Morelos, “the Jacobin wing of the revolution”, this was a class war, an agrarian revolt in gestation, which saw the army, the Church and the large landowners ally with the Spanish crown.

Shortly after, Mexico bore the brunt of the expansive thrust of U.S. capitalism, a close up with what others have termed primitive accumulation, when in 1848 the U.S. invaded and took possession of half of Mexico’s territory – some two million square kilometers comprising what is now Arizona, California, Texas, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. This theft of land was legalized by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in February of 1848.

Ten years later, Mexican liberalism [1], and the foundations of modern Mexico, emerged in the likes of Benito Juárez and his circle constituted out of sections of the emergent bourgeoisie.[2] This social base sought entrance into world trade and a restructuring of production and class relations inside Mexico which would free up capital and increase the exploitation of labor.

In 1855, the Ayutla Revolution brought the Liberal Party to power on a program of opening Mexico for capitalist development. In particular this meant a change in land ownership and control, with the intent that by freeing up “archaic” or “traditional” forms of land ownership and monopoly, this valuable resource could be better exploited for production and, importantly, a new layer of landless workers would be created who had little if anything to sell on the market but their labor power. So in 1856 the Liberals passed an act that prohibited religious and civil bodies from owning more land than they needed to carry out their functions. This targeted both the Church monopoly of land as well as indigenous collective forms of ownership. Other reforms expanded upon this tendency and were enshrined in the 1857 Constitution which Gilly calls the “juridical base of bourgeois national organization.” (p. 2)

An opposing conservative tendency arose in the form of the Conservative Party, which had its based in the clergy and the big latifundistas. They denounced the reforms and, with the support of Pope Pius IX and the French government, the 1857 Constitution. The conservatives fought to protect the old forms of land distribution, receiving assistance from invading French troops (under Napoleon III) in 1862 and 1863 who named Maximilian of Habsburg as Emperor of Mexico. Meanwhile, the Liberal Party received the support of the U.S.

Gilly argues that the rising Mexican bourgeoisie depended upon popular support and “Jacobin methods” in order to dismantle the institutions and structures inherited from colonial times. Hence Juarez’s faction based itself upon a national war and passed such measures as the 1859 nationalization of Church property, the separation of church and state. Such measures only concentrated agrarian property in the hands of the latifundistas. Once the lands of the indigenous communities were parceled up they could be bought at low prices or even seized by the big latifundistas (with no recourse for the indigenous owner, of course).

Northern Mexico developed differently in that it was always marginal to the Spanish colonial project.[3] It was less populated, and nomadic indigenous tribes resisted fiercely against the enclosure and imposition of new land policies, to such an extent that almost only small to medium sized land claims were viable, large claims being less so because of the security required to patrol and retain the land against said tribes. Hence, the north witnessed the rise of a rural middle class on ranches and medium-sized haciendas. The government also compensated surveying companies that would enclose the land and attract [foreign] settlers to work on it.

The quest for land led to the Yaqui War of the late 1870s and early 1880s and also contributed to new generations of peasant revolts, some influenced by the doctrines of utopian socialism and anarchism. Benito Juárez and Porfirio Diaz both advanced the violent crushing of these revolts.

Notes
[1] Here there is a need for clarification of the term liberalism, which is forthcoming. The term “liberal” is sometimes confused in this context, particularly considering that in the early 20th century one of the most important anarchist organizations in Mexico would carry the name Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM -- Mexican Liberal Party).
[2] This emergence was surely not a one-way process, yet Gilly does not elaborate upon what popular forces were emerging from below with potentially antagonistic visions for a new Mexican nation.
[3] With the notable exception of mining (silver, among other resources) which Gilly doesn’t make note of here.

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Gomez-Quiñones on the PLM

So I’ve been working on narrowing the focus of my thesis so as to make it a bit more manageable to finish. Since I have an interest in revolutionary organization and libertarian politics, I’m adjusting the thesis to tell the story of the Mexican Revolution through an in-depth look at the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM – best known for being led by anarchist Ricardo Flores Magón). There’s certain limitations with such a study: the philosophical limitations of anarchist analysis, the organizational shortcomings of the PLM itself (and anarchist organization historically), to name just two.

Yet despite these, or maybe because of these, I feel like a lot can be gleaned from such a study. What’s more, the PLM was active from about 1900 to the end of the Revolution, which makes it a very useful organization through which to trace the development of the wider political and social climate, what pertinent organizational questions developed over time and through struggle, what were the politics and social forces behind the counter-revolution against the popular democratic elements at the grassroots, and much more.

I picked up Juan Gomez-Quiñones’ Sembradores Ricardo Flores Magón y el Partido Liberal Mexicano: A Eulogy and Critique in this turn towards the PLM. It’s an older text, from 1973, but still useful. He raises a number of arguments regarding the efficacy and problems that the PLM faced as a revolutionary organization, which are briefly listed below:

a. The PLM was not a fully developed revolutionary party; it did not have a stable mass membership or a fully developed set of tactics; did have a revolutionary ideology and was a proto organization of revolutionary organizers.

b. Anarchism in general was most successful subjectively in ideals, criticism, and heroism. Its failure was that it was theoretically poor and tactically bankrupt (“its record of revolutionary-organizational failures is matched only by Trotskyites.” p. 12). Anarchist recruits heavily drawn from social elements increasingly marginalized in a changing society, particularly those in transition from agrarian to semi-industrial production – social outlaws, the misfits, the declasse petite-bourgeoisie, los destripados.[1]

c. Yet The PLM contained intellectuals and quasi-industrial urban elements as well as some artisans, and to a lesser degree involved campesinos. Thus in Mexico and the U.S. Southwest, despite its agrarian myths and emphasis, PLM’s appeal was to "modern elements" and not to the social elements that were being superseded.

d. Three or so layers to PLM organizers/members: 1) a large layer composed of Chicanos and Mexicanos who were sympathizers and periodically active, coming mainly from the lower middle class, artisans, laborers; 2) local cores of leadership, mostly Chicano, district organizers, chapter officers, local journalists who were transmitters and interpreters of PLM policy -- all usually active for extended periods of time; 3) the binational leadership, mostly Mexicano, who were educated (both formally and informally), full-time organizers/theoreticians who developed policy and cross-border solidarity.[2]

e. Regeneración (one of the main newspapers published by the PLM) was pivotal for maintaining the vibrancy, the communication, and the spirit of the organization. The paper was how locals knew what was going on in other locals; how they could see party interpretation of events; how their activity and successes could be known to others. When the paper would arrive, groups often formed and the literate would read to those who couldn't read. Discussion and debate would last for days. It was also pertinent for recruitment and spreading the word about the work and ideas of the PLM.

f. Regeneración reflected the process of the movement in Mexico and the experience of radical exiles in the U.S. From 1910 on a radicalization was taking place, the principal motto changed from “Reforma, Libertad y Justicia” to “Tierra y Libertad”.

g. In January 1911 the PLM put out a manifesto calling for direct expropriation and redistribution of land by the people; urged women’s participation in the revolutionary process. Yet politically and economically the 1911 manifesto was naïve and not analytical or viable. The beliefs in spontaneous united action were exhortations and not a viable program for revolution.

h. Problems of organization, strategy, and political analysis marred the Baja California offensive in 1910-1911. It was not only one more failure of the PLM, but also a costly political mistake. The motivations for the attack included the PLM's rejection of bourgeois nationalism and international boundaries (the PLM was carrying this out in part from the U.S.), class solidarity, and multiracial struggle. Baja was isolated and was sparsely inhabited, thus there was a political vacuum, unlike most of the rest of Mexico where there existed competing efforts at establishing political hegemony. Further, an attack in Baja would be a direct assault on the holdings of foreign companies, which were a dominant force shaping Mexican economic and political life. Baja was easily accessible by land and sea. Its takeover was also conceived as a means for securing a base for extending revolution to other parts of Mexico and for establishing a model for anarchist society [propaganda of the deed].

i. The PLM was marred by factionalism, ideological and personal, and the long list of splits over the years had a debilitating effect on the leadership of PLM (its consistency, its talent, etc.).

Notes
[1] Gomez-Quiñones doesn’t explain how the U.S. was also an exception to this characterization, particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when anarchist organizers found a good deal of support and popularity for their ideas and methods among the industrial working class.
[2] As can be seen within these layers, it'll be necessary to provide a larger explanation of why and how the PLM came to have a bi-national membership, how the U.S.-Mexico border and exile played into this, and what advantages and problems such a constitution presented.

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From Mexico to Palestine, With Love

It's been difficult indeed to get work done these past few weeks. Life always seems to interrupt plans, especially when it comes to school work which I admit is rather low on my general list of priorities. As of late, the Israeli invasion and barbarous attacks on Gaza have kept me preoccupied and very, very angry. It's been amazing and exciting to see the size and types of demonstrations that have broken out around the world, and in the spirit of solidarity I wanted to share the details of some actions that took place in Mexico.

My Word is My Weapon reports that at the Festival de la Digna Rabia in Mexico City Subcomandante Marcos and the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) offered their solidarity with the Palestinian people facing down one of the most well-funded and highly trained militaries in the world. Meanwhile, Narco News reports that some clashes occurred between members/supporters of Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO) and the municipal police of Oaxaca in front of the U.S. consulate there:

"The announcement of the Israel invasion of Gaza provoked world-wide pro-Palestine demonstrations, among them a protest march of a small number of adherents to the Asamblea Popular of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO), who on Saturday, January 3, marched from the neighborhood of Siete Regiones to the office of the American consul.

The USA’s consular office is located on the main tourist pedestrian street. The front of the building is now spray-painted, and when criminal charges were filed, the charge was defacing property. The “scene of the crime” is pictured in the accompanying photos. I suppose that prompt (illegal) police action came about out of fear of a major protest among tourists, (more of whom are European and national Mexicans, than are Americans), in front of the consular office. (As happened when the US invaded Iraq)

Before the APPO protests against the Israeli invasion could get well underway, the Municipal Police of Oaxaca arrested nineteen protesters, with unjustified roughness, according to accounts published by APPO members present, including those from the anarchist group Vocal, the Casota (a Crespo Street house previously raided by police on December 8, 2008 ), and members of the socialist and communist parties. The protesters were taken to barracks of the State Police, located in the town of San Bartólo Coyotepec.

Later reports state that some were beaten, and their belongings stolen.

As word of the arrests circulated, a crowd of APPO supporters soon appeared at the police quarters, and staged a demonstration and meeting outside its doors. The police responded by spraying tear gas onto the more than seventy people present. Among the meetings’ leaders were directors of Section 22 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE) , including its secretary Gabriel Lopez Chavez. Also present was the ubiquitous Flavio Sosa Villavicencio."

For more, go here. Protests were also organized in a number of other Latin American countries.

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